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Study Reveals Search Engine User Behavior
The Importance of Search Engine Placement
Researchers at Penn State's information sciences and technology (IST), analyzed over 450,000 web queries submitted to AlltheWeb.com in a 24-hour period, with some interesting results regarding search engine placement. The study included length of user sessions, number of pages visited, and relevance of search results.
"People make instantaneous judgments about whether to stay on a site, and if a site doesn't the give the right impression, users will bypass it," said Dr. Jim Jansen, assistant professor in Penn State's information sciences and technology (IST). "A page has to be well-designed, easy to load and relevant to a searcher's needs."
A summary of the study's findings:
- Half of all users entered only one search query
- About 55% of users checked out one result only
- More than 80% stopped after looking at three results
- 54% of users viewed just one page of search results per visit to the search engine
- Only 19% of users went on to the second page
- Fewer than 10% of users looked at the third page of search results
- Eight out of 10 times, the abstract dissuades searchers from going to a site
- Upon clicking through to a site, one in five searchers stay 60 seconds or less
- One out of every two search results isn't relevant to what the searcher was looking for
Conclusions
Getting your website indexed by the search engines is not enough. Your web pages must be listed within the first 3 pages of search results, otherwise 80% of searchers will never find it. Ideally, you should strive for top search engine placement, a first page listing. For best results, a top 3 ranking is needed.
To enhance your chances of getting your web page listing clicked, improve your site's search result abstract by making it more enticing and relevant to the searcher. Some search engines, use the contents of the META description tag as the search results abstract, if the contents of the tag includes the search query. So take another look at your web page META description tags and ensure they exist, are properly written, and accurately reflect the unique content on each page of your website.
When purchasing keywords through Pay-Per-Click (PPC) search engines such as Overture, consider the cost of getting your listing into the top three bids, and be sure to track your return on investment for each keyword. Some keywords simply won't be worth the investment, while others will result in an acceptable return on investment. Since every click costs you money, remember your goal is to have only individuals that match your target audience click on your listings. To do this, bid on non-generic keywords and write very specific keyword titles and descriptions that will dissuade non-target-audience searchers from clicking your PPC link.
Request a free search engine placement analysis and quote for improving your search engine placement.
Further
Reading: Search Engine Placement and Internet Marketing:
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